Anna Shaw's bright dark eyes glowed with intense feeling. Like the maid of whom she had been reading, she had her vision--a vision of a large, happy life waiting for her--little, untaught backwoods girl though she was. Her book led the way down a charmed path into the world of dreams. For the time she forgot the drudgery of the days--the plowing and planting and hoeing about the stumps of their little clearing, the cutting of wood, the carrying of water. She walked back to the cabin that was home, with her head held high and her lips parted in a smile. But all at once she was brought back to real things with a rude bump. "What have you been doing, Anna?" demanded her father, who stood waiting for her in the doorway. "Reading, sir," the girl faltered. "So you have been _idling_ away precious hours at a time your mother has needed your help?" the stern voice went on accusingly. "What do you suppose the future will bring to one who has not proved 'faithful in little'?" The girl looked at her father without speaking. She knew that her share in the work of the household was not "little." Her young hands hardened from rough toil twitched nervously; the injustice cut her to the quick. Couldn't her father imagine what holding down that claim in the woods had meant for the little family during the eighteen months that he and the two older boys had remained behind in the East? In his joy at securing the grant of land from the Government, he already pictured the well-conditioned farm that would one day be his and his children's. "The acorn was not an acorn, but a forest of young oaks." In a flash she saw as if it were yesterday the afternoon when their pathetic little caravan had at last reached the home that awaited them. She saw the frail, tired mother give one glance at the rude log hut in the stump-filled clearing, and then sink in a despairing heap on the dirt floor. It was but the hollow shell of a cabin--walls and roof, with square holes for door and windows gaping forlornly at the home-seekers. She heard the wolves and wildcats as she had on that first night when they had huddled together--helpless creatures from another world--not knowing if their watch-fires would keep the hungry beasts at bay. She saw parties of Indians stalk by in war-paint and feathers. She saw herself, a child of twelve, trudging wearily to the distant creek for water until the time when, with her brother's help, she dug a well. There was, too, the work of laying a floor and putting in doors and windows. Like Robinson Crusoe, she had served a turn at every trade; to-day that of carpenter or builder, to-morrow that of farmer, fisherman, or woodcutter. As these pictures flashed before the eye of memory she looked at her father quietly, without a word of defense or self-pity. All she said was, "Father, some day I am going to college."